Posted on 12/06/2025 12:43:07 PM PST by xxqqzz
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken with hundreds of senior executives at America’s largest trucking companies. Nearly all say they only recently discovered the massive influx of foreign drivers and motor carriers. Most assumed the trend was gradual; none realized it was exponential.
Few had ever heard the term “non-domiciled CDL” until this summer or understood how many drivers with little or no real training have flooded the industry. They failed to understand that despite their own investments in upgraded training and compliance efforts in recent years, that the smallest operators had been handed a massive gift: the ability to “train” their own truck drivers, with little to no oversight from Federal regulators.
These changes were driven by a long-standing belief—pushed hard by the American Trucking Associations (ATA)—that the U.S. faces a permanent truck-driver shortage. The ATA’s solution was to lobby Congress and FMCSA to lower every barrier to entry, convinced that new drivers would flow to large ATA-member fleets rather than small operators.
That assumption was rooted in an old reality: twenty years ago, only the biggest carriers offered real-time tracking, electronic tendering, and direct shipper relationships. Small carriers and brokers were stuck with phone, fax, and leftover freight.
That world no longer exists.
Fueled by billions in venture capital and private equity, freight brokers have not only caught up on technology—they’ve leapfrogged the large fleets. They offer single-source routing guides, superior automation, and, crucially, no obligation to enforce hours-of-service, speed limiters, or driver-qualification standards. Brokers simply buy the cheapest capacity available.
When the ATA successfully lobbied to dismantle entry barriers, it inadvertently handed the industry to those brokers and to the least-compliant segment of the market.
(Excerpt) Read more at freightwaves.com ...
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More of article:
Key regulatory changes that removed barriers and gutted safety enforcement:
2016 – DOT stops enforcing English-proficiency requirements for CDLs
2018 – ELD mandate implemented; self-certified devices with intentional back doors allow unlimited editing of driving hours
2019 – Non-domiciled CDLs introduced, permitting foreign nationals to obtain U.S. commercial licenses
2022 – Entry-Level Driver Training rule triggers explosion of unaccredited “CDL mills” selling licenses for $500–$1,000 in days with virtually no training
These minimally trained foreign drivers cannot pass the vetting of large, compliant carriers (no work authorization, poor English, zero experience). They end up at small, often foreign-owned fleets that pay 40% below market and routinely run 14–20-hour days using tampered ELDs.
And with the Motor Voter law, every illegal “license” holder was registered to vote. I wonder how many times they voted, and how many States?
bump
The Democrats are waging total economic war against the American people.
They made getting a CDL harder, which increased the payoff for cheating the system.
so some of the key changes happened during Trump 1?
Drove for 20 years, the last 15 for a bonded carrier that carried DOW(DOD) freight and pharmaceuticals. This problem has been evident the whole time wife and I drive as a team the last 17 years. Russians, Eastern Europeans, and the influx of trash from the Middle East and India/Pakistan area. They has never been a shortage of drivers, just a shortage of qualified drivers that refuse to work for less than minimum wage. For executives to say they didn’t know about the influx is to say they refused to say anything about it. The stories of 3 or more drivers in a truck are true; truck always moves. The only thing that gets washed is their feet in restroom sinks.
What happens when a flaming queer runs the DOT?
The Democrats are waging total economic war against the American people.
Plenty of Republicans are also in on it.
Middleman operations can be a boon to competition and/or can spell doom to everyone but the middlemen. In time, sometimes, profit margins of end producers shrink and the middlemen become the ones with the highest profit margins. Farmers have been seeing this for decades. Grocery store prices get raised but it rarely starts with the farmer, it comes from the middlemen.
2016 – DOT stops enforcing English-proficiency requirements for CDLs
2018 – ELD mandate implemented; self-certified devices with intentional back doors allow unlimited editing of driving hours
2019 – Non-domiciled CDLs introduced, permitting foreign nationals to obtain U.S. commercial licenses
so it began in the 1st Trump administration.
Or at the end of Obama.
That applies to companies that own the products carried by those trucks, the companies which hired the truck companies to carry the cargo, the driving schools which gave them the CDL's, the states which issued the CDL's, the companies which owned the trailers and trucks the cargo was carried on or by, the companies which paid and/or provided the drivers, etc.
Too nuch legal neep is required to explain the legal reasoning here. I was a civil litigation attorney for forty years. IMO it will take at least twenty years for such litigation to end up going through the courts.
That twenty year period will start only after the last CDL carried by an illegal alien is cancelled.
This has been going on for years. Obama did everything he could to eliminate experienced, American CDL drivers.
This has been going on for years. Obama did everything he could to eliminate experienced, American CDL drivers.
The next time a candidate says they want to fundamentally transform the country, believe them!
Lots of Hispanics too
More drivers & less experience didn’t gain us a whole lot, did it? Experienced careful drivers is a MUST, especially for long haul operations. It’s very what being without those careful requirements brings.
Yep. Takes time to implement.
Yes. Evidence of a DOT running on its own - 2016-2021
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